Are there any survivors of 9/11 on Quora?
A personal account of September 11th
A bright-eyed and bushy-tailed recent college graduate, I spent the entire summer of 2001 in Lower Manhattan living, training and working in the shadows of the Twin Towers.
From a young age, I had always felt some sort of a connection to the Twin Towers. My dad was a civil engineer and worked for the Port Authority, the organization that oversaw construction of the towers in the 1970s. After they were completed in 1973, he worked on the 73rd floor of North Tower. As a young child, I remember making regular visits to the office.
Here is an old black and white photo my dad took from his office of the Two Bridges area and downtown Brooklyn:
I recently discovered some reels of 8mm film that my dad had taken around 1974. I had them scanned and uploaded to YouTube. You can catch a glimpse of some nice views of Lower Manhattan and the newly constructed Twin Towers in the film montage I stitched together here:
Note: All of the photos that follow are from my personal archives. The account, times and dates have been pieced together by going through various media, reviewing timestamps, reading journal entries etc.
July 2001. I was in Lower Manhattan for analyst training. I stayed at the Marriott at 3 WTC and attended training sessions in the conference rooms on the lower floors.
On July 25th, 2001, towards the end of training, my analyst class headed up to Windows of the World at the 107th floor of North Tower and I snapped this picture of the Two Bridges area and downtown Brooklyn. I only realized many years later that this was very similar to the shot my dad had taken more than 25 years earlier.
This was the last time I was to ever set foot in the building.
September 2001. After training, I moved into a service apartment at 100 John Street to begin a six-week rotation, following which I would be shipping out to Hong Kong for my full-time posting.
My original flight was scheduled for September 15th, 2001.
On Sunday night (the 9th), I had dinner in nearby Chinatown with my parents, siblings and cousins. My older sister was also scheduled to fly out that week for a multi-year assignment with the Air Force in Germany. This was to be our collective family farewell before both of us shipped off to various corners of the globe.
On Monday night (the 10th), I pulled a late one at the office, polishing off a couple small projects and preparing for my departure. I remember being quite excited about the move — this would be the first time in my twenty-odd years that I would be spending time outside the country for any extended period of time.
My office was at 130 Liberty Street (the Bankers Trust Building), which was located directly across the street from South Tower. Here is a map of the area with some key locations annotated in blue:
Several hours past midnight, I stumbled my way back to my apartment and collapsed in a heap on the bed thinking, I’ll head into the office a bit later tomorrow morning … as everything faded to black …
September 11th, 2001. Around 9:03AM. I am still dreaming. I hear a deep, growling “whooooosh” sound and feel the slight shudder of air compressing ever so slightly. I would later learn that this was the second tower being hit. I had slept through the first.
I realize I am not dreaming but instead in that bleary-eyed state as your body starts to go through its boot-up sequence. Something isn’t right here, I think to myself. In the distance emerge the jarring shrieks of wailing sirens, soft at first, then louder, and then peaking with that perceptible change in pitch signaling that they have passed.
My initial thought is that there had been an incident on the subway. John Street was the crossroads of multiple subway lines in the city. But then I notice that my cellphone is ringing and I pick up. It is Mom. She asks me if I am okay. I ask, “what are you talking about?” She tells me to turn on the TV. I do.
A couple minutes later, I am throwing on my clothes. I grab my wallet. I had recently purchased a digital camera, the first I’d ever owned. I grab that too.
There was still quite a bit of work to get done before I had to ship off to Hong Kong. So at this point I am still wondering if I should be heading into the office. At the very least, I probably have an excuse to be a little late …
9:28 AM. I walk west on John Street towards South Tower. The street is a blur of concerned-looking pedestrians, emergency vehicles and first responders.
9:31 AM. As I walk out of John Street, North Tower emerges with plumes of black smoke billowing upwards into the clear, blue sky.
9:38 AM. My office building lies ahead. In the picture below, it is the gray/black building on the the left side. South Tower is the light gray building on the right side, located directly across Liberty Street.
I am still thinking about whether I should go into the office. But as you can see, first responders have begun to build a perimeter around the area. This is as close as I can get.
At this point, there is no thought that the towers would collapse. I recall the famous picture of the Empire State Building on fire after a bomber had crashed into it six decades earlier. The Empire State Building is still standing, I assure myself.
They’ll eventually put the fires out and it will be a lot of work but they will eventually patch everything up, nice and new.
So does this mean I need to go to work later today or not?
The reality distortion field is strong at this point.
9:45 AM. Police and first responders instruct the gathering crowds to disperse. I head back to the apartment. I turn around and take one final shot of the two towers before making my way back home.
As I walk back, a question nags in the back of my mind: Why is it taking so long to put out the fires?
9:56 AM. At this point, cellular networks are all jammed up. It is impossible to make a cellphone call. But back at the apartment I discover that while the phone circuits are also all tied up, for some reason I can still connect to the Internet.
Multiple IM windows flash on the screen of a bulky monitor. CNN’s live coverage drones on in the background. I am multi-tasking with concerned friends and loved ones:
9:59AM. Suddenly, the lights flicker. The room shakes. A deep, ominous rumbling sound approaches from the distance. That can’t be good. I look at the TV and nobody is sure what is going on. CNN cuts to a reporter watching from across the river and I see a massive plume of smoke where South Tower used to be.
10:07 AM.I am pretty sure I am no longer going to work today …
This is the moment when the seriousness of the situation really hits. The reality distortion field that was holding out hope for some degree of normalcy shatters. Everything now starts to blur. I shift into survival mode and begin gathering my things.
10:28 AM. Another loud rumble, this one louder and more noticeable than the first. A few moments later the street-facing windows go dark as an expanding mushroom cloud of dust and debris from the collapse of South Tower (as I would later learn) turns day into night. I am scared.
At this point, I really do not know what to do. Perhaps as a way to suppress the panic rising from my stomach, I seek purpose, a way to be useful. The first thought that pops into mind is donating blood to help the injured. And the only hospital I am familiar with is St. Vincent’s Hospital, which also happens to be close to where my good friend “wedge” lived. I gather my things and leave the apartment.
11:18 AM. I make my way down the fire stairwell and emerge to a scene that is straight out of a Hollywood disaster movie. It is surreal.
A nice man is passing out face masks and hands me one. Thank you, anonymous friend.
I snake my way under the Brooklyn Bridge and through Chinatown before cutting westward across Tribeca and heading up Varick Street. Scenes of dazed, ash-covered New Yorkers, an eerily deserted Holland Tunnel, and the constant blare of emergency vehicles still haunt my memories.
3.03 PM. After stopping by my friend’s apartment, I finally make it to St. Vincent’s. I am expecting a bloodbath, the area littered with stretchers and flashing lights and haggard-looking hospital staff.
Strangely enough, there does not seem to be much activity at all. Just a lot of folks milling around, like me probably also there to donate but finding no takers.
“How can I help? Are you taking donations of blood?”
“No it doesn’t seem like we need any …”
But what about all the injured …
You have to remember that people were still unsure exactly what had happened. Nobody had ever been through something like this before. It would be a while until the reason they didn’t need blood dawned on me … again part of the slow-motion process of adjusting to the sudden, jarring new reality …
Around 6:30 PM. I head back to my friend’s place at West 4th and Houston but it has become increasingly clear that it is time to leave the city. I make my way uptown to Penn Station and catch a train out of the city as the sun finally begins to set on the smoky, smoldering city.
My flight to Hong Kong was cancelled, of course. So was my sister’s.
For the next ten days, I was basically in standby mode — not only the flight, but many other aspects of my life.
What happened to my things? Do I need to go to the new makeshift office they were setting up in New Jersey? Will I even have a job in three months? Are we going to war?
I would later learn that my office at 130 Liberty was hit hard by debris during the collapse of South Tower, which tore a 24-story gash in the building’s facade, and eventually the building had to be demolished. Thankfully, I was able to go and collect my personal belongings from the service apartment on John Street. The electricity had been completely shut down at that point — I remember having to lug my large suitcase down many flights of stairs — in the pitch-black darkness — and drag it all the way uptown while trying to figure out how to get around the security barriers now encircling the disaster zone.
Eventually, flights resumed. I shipped out on September 21st, 2001, to begin my new life in Hong Kong.
With the new job, the long hours and new experience of living abroad for the first time in my life, I was able to suppress some of the feeling and emotion of 9/11 and the fallen towers. This is not to say that it wasn’t a big deal outside the States, it just wasn’t the same. Unlike my friends back home, especially those in New York City, it was possible for me to avoid it. Which I did.
I remember, still quite vividly, a couple months after arriving in Hong Kong, seeing the towers on a magazine cover as I walked by a bookstore in the mall. I paused to take a look and immediately started to feel a surge of … something. My eyes moistened and my heartbeat quickened ever so slightly. I felt goosebumps. But I just bottled it up, walked away and went back to my expatriate life.
Some time later, I flew back to the States on my first extended break from work. I landed at JFK on a cloudy, misty night and hopped into a taxi. As the taxi cruised its way towards the city, I looked up and saw several beams of light rising and disappearing into the clouds.
Where did the towers go?!
It was at this moment that everything finally hit. The reality distortion field had finally been broken. The emotion came pouring out. Tears welled up and flowed. I could feel the hole in my heart where the towers used to be.
You see, up until that moment, I thought maybe, just maybe there was this tiny chance that it had all been a bad dream. But now it was real. I could see it with my own eyes.
Before 9/11, life seemed care-free and idyllic. When I thought back to that time, memories — even painful ones — seemed always bathed in warm shades of golden-hour oranges and yellows.
After 9/11, everything was gritty and gray, numb and cynical. There was a sense of helplessness as I became more aware of how the world worked and I felt more powerless than ever in my ability to have any sort of impact. My life and outlook had clearly changed. America had changed. Everything had changed.
Years later, I moved back to New York. And I eventually found my way back to Lower Manhattan. I was hesitant at first. In fact, for the first few years in the city, I avoided it as much as I could.
Lower Manhattan had never been a residential-friendly neighborhood. I still remember during the summer of 2001 walking down John Street on the dark, deserted streets after all of the office workers had left. It did not always feel safe. It wasn’t a place where I thought I would ever willingly choose to live.
The entire Financial District was still a massive construction pit. Few restaurants or stores were open on the weekends. Many of the big banks that had vacated the area in the wake of 9/11, never returned. There were very few permanent residents; it was still primarily commuters working at the businesses that had chosen to stay. It was dark and drab and full of soot.
But green shoots started to appear.
I remember venturing down there in 2007 or 2008 on a random weekend and noticing, to my pleasant surprise, an actual cafe that was open with people sitting outside. The billions in recovery money that had poured into rebuilding the neighborhood had started to take root, with the first new developments opening up in 2005 and 2006.
When we found out we were going to have our first child, I immediately started to look for a permanent home. Needing more space, I looked at the Financial District — or as some brokers were starting to call it, “FiDi” — where prices were still relatively low. I had never up to that point considered living down there. But we found a place we liked and bought it, fixed it up, and moved in.
And then I remember a brisk, spring evening in early May 2011 when President Obama stood on a podium and announced that our Navy SEALs had located and killed Osama Bin Laden. I remember running out of my apartment and heading to the WTC construction site with my camera and my American flag and celebrating with a gathering crowd of fellow New Yorkers.
It was another hole that had been drilled into the dam that held back the emotion and feeling that had been bottled up for almost a decade. The country and the city and the neighborhood were healing with me alongside; the scars were beginning to fall away. And color was returning, even if ever so slightly.
In the following years, Lower Manhattan — and especially FiDi — continued to heal. Slowly but surely, it became less and less of a construction zone. For a while, each new opening was a big deal. But the pace quickened and there was a point where it seemed like a new restaurant or business was opening every week.
Every day, the neighborhood became slightly more livable. Residential development took a brief hiatus during the housing bust of 2008–2009 but picked up soon thereafter. The local population began to tick upwards. Strollers started clogging the narrow streets. Neighborhood debates evolved from dealing with the constant stream of construction vehicles to the need to build new schools for the exploding school-age population.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the neighborhood in what would eventually become the second-costliest hurricane in history up to that point. But after what the neighborhood had been through with 9/11, it barely skipped a beat.
Friends moved into the neighborhood. New friendships were formed, mostly with others who were, like us, relatively new residents. It started to feel like a real, permanent place where I could see myself living for a long, long time.
Today, walk around the neighborhood and you will know that not only has Lower Manhattan recovered, it is arguably better and stronger than ever before. What was once an almost exclusively 9-to-5 commuter district that emptied out after dark (and on the weekends) was now a thriving 24/7 bedroom community. The residential population recently crossed 70,000, more than doubling from the days leading up to 9/11.
The economy, which had once been dominated by the financial services sector, is now diversified with hundreds of technology, media and advertising companies and a heavy concentration of startups and small businesses. There are hundreds of world-class restaurants and entertainment venues serving these residents, the workers (many of whom are also residents) as well as the millions of out-of-town visitors that stop by every year.
The recovery of Lower Manhattan after the horrific events of September 11th, 2001, is a testament to the resiliency of New Yorkers and, indeed, America itself. And in some strange, unexpected way, 9/11 turned out to be a catalyst that pushed Lower Manhattan to become what it is today, like a terrible fire that clears out an old forest only to see a healthy, new forest rise in its place.
Instead of fear, cynicism and the feeling of helplessness, 9/11 has come to represent something different, something far more positive. Living in the neighborhood and seeing how far it has come is a daily reminder of how good can sometimes emerge out of unspeakable horror.
To me, the lesson of 9/11 was conquering fear and cynicism with hope and love, and defeating those feelings of helplessness by summoning determination and embracing your community. These are the ideas that I want to pass on to my children and others when I talk about that day.
September 11th, 2018.
From that fateful day 17 years ago, my life has come full circle.
I live, eat, and breathe in the shadows of a set of gleaming towers built on the ashes of their fallen brethren. Dad regales a new generation of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed children with tales of legendary towers from a bygone era.
They are beacons that welcome us every time we return from our travels, warm reminders that we are nearly home after a long journey. They are symbols of the thriving neighborhoods that have grown up in their shade, of our friends and the community that we love. They watch over our children as they run and play and climb in the parks along West Street.
When I walk by the area — perhaps on the way to lunch at an Eataly that is across the street from a new park that sits atop the ground where my old office building used to be — I instinctively look up to gaze at the new towers … or down as I pay homage to the shimmering pools where the old towers used to be.
My eyes glisten and my heart tugs at the memory of what we lost that day. At the same time, I feel a profound sense of peace and gratitude and love for what we have gained and built in the years since.
The journey was long and at times circuitous but I now realize that 9/11 was one of the most important events that made me who I am today. That day and those towers are woven deeply in the fabric of my life and etched indelibly in my heart. And I know that it will remain an important piece of who I am until it is time to finally join the souls of all those who perished that day.
This was originally published on Quora on September 11, 2018.
Very moving, thank you for writing this